


Shadow

by Yunimori



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, Emotional, Empurata, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Repair, Short One Shot, Writing Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 05:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21174551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yunimori/pseuds/Yunimori
Summary: Writing Prompt from TumblrAfter living with only an Empurata mask for so long, Shockwave is not prepared for what changes when he gets his head back. It's more than a little overwhelming, especially now that he can actually see again.





	Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> I'm copying all of my Shockwave and Optimus/Shockwave ficlets and drabbles from my tumblr accounts over to my ao3 account. Most of these are going to be incredibly short (hence the drabble tag), and either in short-form format or 100 Themes Challenge format.
> 
> This is just for my own peace of mind, making sure they are safe from tumblr's random purges.
> 
> However, feel free to read them and let me know if you enjoyed them!

Shockwave didn’t _think_ anyone realized how little he could actually see before Chromedome had given him his head back. Even with the bandages on, covering his eyes and preventing him from blinding himself before he had a chance to heal, he was seeing more light and colour than he had before, in the moments he had of pure lucidity before pain medication knocked him out again. 

In one of those moments, quietly awake and enduring the sensation of healing skin and _bone_ telling him about it, he was thinking about that. His head was still bandaged. He couldn’t see, yet at the same time, what filtered through the bandages held more _life_ than anything had while he still wore that damned mask.

He didn’t think even the makers of the Empurata mask knew everything about its tortures. Being unable to eat or drink was obvious. That was planned, as the port for a liquid syringe was included in the mask schema. The inability to use the full range of emotion in a voice was planned, as the single speaker ‘allowed’ for a bot being punished by Empurata had limited functionality for emotion, unlike their natural voices.

The eye, though….he didn’t quite think that had been planned. Sight was a bit of a luxury for Empurata sufferers. Shockwave had spent six million years living in a mostly-flat world of shadows and muted reality. There was no depth perception for the single eye. It hadn’t been built in, and even six million years later, Shockwave’s brain had not adapted to falsifying a sense of depth. There was little colour, either. What he _could _see was muted, faded, as though he spent his life looking at a washed out photograph. There was no brightness to anything. Daylight itself seemed gloomy, even if the sun was shining as brightly as ever. Cloudy days may as well have been midnight, for all he could see then. He could not cry, he could not even _blink_, and turning his eye off left him completely in the dark. No matter what he did, that hateful eye ached.

He’d gotten…sadly used to looking at things this way. Even more so once he got his soul, his _emotions_, back. Everything was faded, he lived in a world of tinted greys and wispy shades. There was no true light, no true colour. Sometimes he had wondered if he even remembered what colour _looked_ like properly. If he remembered people’s faces truly, or if they were warped by his lack of…everything.

He wondered even when Chromedome came to finally remove the bandages, a week and a day after getting his head back. For a few long minutes, he held his eyes closed, quietly reveling in the fact that he had _eyelids_ and could do so, while still being able to see light filtering through the skin covering his eyes. 

Then he opened them, and was met with a 3D world full of colour so bright and cheerful that he was nearly knocked back in bed. There were still shadows, but they had proper places now. Following bots and objects as the sun moved through windows and touched the ground outside. 

For a minute, Shockwave just stared.

Then, for the first time in six million years, he actually cried.


End file.
